Adobe announces Photoshop Elements 11

Adobe has released version 11 of Photoshop Elements, its entry-level image-editing software. This new version introduces a redesigned UI featuring a brighter background and larger type for greater readability along with easier access to commonly used tools. A new Quick Edit mode offers a simplified interface for beginners, while seasoned users can take advantage of new lens blur filters, tilt-shift, vignetting and contrast editing tools. It is available for $99.99 and previous version owners can upgrade for $79.99. Adobe is also releasing Premiere Elements 11, its video-editing software, with an identical UI redesign and Quick Edit mode at the same price. A bundle containing both programs is also available for $149.99, or $119.99 for current bundle owners.

With this latest release, Adobe's Photoshop Elements team has concentrated primarily on improving workflow and the user experience rather than adding a long list of features and effects. Addressing long-standing complaints of hard-to-read text on a dark UI of previous iterations, this new version uses a light gray background and larger type, along with a decidedly app-like icon-based interface to present novice users with only the tools they are likely to use. All of the functionality of Elements 10 remains for more seasoned users, however, and new lens blur filters (from Photoshop CS) and simulated drawing effects are found in Elements 11 as well. As with the previous version of Elements, you have access to the Adobe Camera Raw processing engine with Basic, Detail and Camera Calibration tabs for a wide range of editing options for Raw files.

The Elements Organizer, the program's image management interface, sees changes as well. Beyond the redesigned UI, you can now easily filter images with new People, Place and Event views. Leveraging Adobe's face recognition algorithms you can have photos automatically sorted into separate stacks for individual friends, colleagues or family members. A Google-powered map interface allows for both automatic and manual geo-tagging of photos. And a Smart Events options lets you automatically group photos by capture time with the ability to adjust the granularity of the date/time range.

You can email both still images and videos or upload them directly to popular sharing sites likes Facebook, Flickr, Cewe Photobook (Europe) YouTube and Vimeo.

Revamped User Interfaces and Innovative Features Make Photo and Video Editing, Organizing and Sharing Easier

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Sept. 25, 2012 - Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 11 and Adobe® Premiere® Elements 11, newly designed versions of its No. 1 selling consumer photo- and video-editing software*. Photoshop Elements 11 offers a complete solution for editing, organizing and sharing photo creations while Premiere Elements 11 offers easy creation of engaging home movies with professional flair. Available as stand-alone products, Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11 can also be purchased together in a low-priced bundle, providing powerful, easy-to-use tools that simplify editing and turn everyday snapshots and videos into sensational photos and home movies, creating memories that can instantly be shared with friends and family. Both solutions are available for Windows® and Mac.

“Photos and videos allow us to capture and share moments in time,” said Lea Hickman, vice president products, Creative Consumer Business, Adobe. “Powerful – yet friendly and easy to use – Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11 inspire creativity and help consumers make the most of remembering and sharing these personal memories.”

Make photos look their best with editing options that offer virtually everything from quick fixes to a number of creative possibilities:

A completely refreshed, user-friendly interface featuring the same engine as Adobe Photoshop - the industry standard for digital imaging - includes easily-navigated Quick, Guided and Expert editing modes; one-click options; a helpful Action bar; and big, bold icons to help users get the most from their shots

Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 and Adobe Premiere Elements 11 software for Windows and Mac is available now at www.adobe.com, and will soon be available at retail outlets such as Amazon.com, B and H Photo and Video, Best Buy, Costco, New Egg, Office Depot and Staples. The Photoshop Elements 11 & Premiere Elements 11 bundle is available now for a suggested retail price of US$149.99, with upgrade pricing of US$119.99. Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 and Adobe Premiere Elements 11 are available individually for a suggested retail price of US$99.99, with upgrade pricing of US$79.99. (Prices listed are the Adobe direct store prices in the U.S.; reseller prices may vary. Prices do not include tax or shipping and handling.)

Information about other language versions, as well as pricing, upgrade and support policies is available at Adobe.com. For free training videos, visit Adobe TV.

I used the Quick Selection Tool to roughly select a small part of an evergreen tree with cloudy sky behind. Refine edge had a brush I could use to use to refine and expand. At a radius of 366 px I very crudely selected the rest of the tree. Then Shift Edge to about 60. That's it, done. Maybe I won't hate selecting any more - once I find a price I can live with.

Tool Options at the lower left closed the 1.25 inch bin on a 12 inch vertical screen that contained one little slider. The [ and ] keys work better than the slider.I want a keyboard shortcut to close Tools if it must be fixed and wide. Also I believe I saved a jpeg from 16 bit which 10 would not do.

H and S has the Alt key options back. Ctrl U, Alt 7 puts me right where I want to be for fringing fixes.

So it functions better but screen economy is really bad and there doesn't seem to be an option.

I downloaded Elements 11 trial. 16 bit functions about the same so far.Camera Raw 7 will force me to buy it - once I find it at half price. It is better.

Bigger does not describe the new arrangement. In the way is more like it.The top bar (Open, Quick, Guided etc) is mostly wasted space. Opening a tool such as Select will open a huge bin at the bottom that used to fit fine in that space at the top. Tools is big and fat and fixed in place.

Panels most used, Info, Histogram etc. are combined with tabs. Info no longer gives pixel dimensions. With 10 I keep 5 panels open on the second screen.

Adobe, enthusiasts like me want 16 bit functions without gimmicks or organizers or networking. I don't even need layers. Make the Healing Brush 16 bit and clean up the Elements 10 interface and I will buy it now for $75. Please be sure to have a way to lock panels in place, 3 ways to reset including Shutdown is annoying when I have to open and place them again.Maybe call it PhotoShop LE.

Don't like Lightroom so far but this is forcing me to take another look. I bet I won't like the sharpening. I use Unsharp Mask twice at diameter 0.5 and 59.8. The large radius is for local contrast. I don't use Clarity except on over sharpened images usually about -2.

I think Adobe could make money selling a minimized 16 bit editor with Camera Raw for around $75. All but Healing Brush are in Elements and that is 16 bit in PS as far as I know. It would mostly be a matter of removing "features".

I also have a problem with Camera Raw 7. I compared with 6 on a very dark image and it is so much better I may re-edit all images that were shot dark to avoid blowing out highlights. Much unexpected work.

This is effectively a big increase in potential dynamic range which means a lot to me because I usually shoot compacts for the deep DOF.

Heh, a brighter background, and larger text & buttons. The main problem with Photoshop Elements was that users had insecurities about whether or not it was professional... and now these 2 changes lunge it in exactly the wrong direction, adding everything people don't want to see in this program: brighter and larger.

If the interface had always been like this, perhaps people could appreciate it more (there are some programs out there that pull off bright/large very well), but there's a contrast effect where you compare something new with the version you had before it... and I can't imagine anyone liking 1) suddenly having large buttons, whereas before they were small... and 2) a bright interface, whereas before it was dark and professional. For instance, I absolutely can't stand editing darker images on a bright screen, because you can't see into the dark regions.

Hopefully, there will be options for this stuff, but I wonder how many people will find them.

The messages seem contradictory; I ask the following, but with a preface.

PREFACE: The CS version of Photoshop supports 16-bit images, and provides full 16-bit editing capability for most editing including adjustment layers, and certainly for all common adjustment functions such as levels, curves, hue/saturation, color balance, blending modes, etc. And this is true whether one is working in Photoshop “PSD” format or TIFF.

Note: I am not speaking of the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the program as it interfaces with Windows. I am referring to 16-bit (as contrasted with 8-bit) images.

I know that some earlier versions of Photoshop ELEMENTS handled only 8-bit images, and adjustment layers were 8-bit only (even though Corel’s similarly priced PaintShop Pro was all 16-bit long, long ago).

QUESTION: Does the new Photoshop Elements 11, or for that matter Elements 10, provide full support (or mostly so), including 16-bit adjustment-layer editing capability?

The matter is with respect to 16-bit files only, not converting to 8-bit. I must use adjustment LAYERS and I must keep files in 16-bit mode (except for printing).

I assume, therefore, that Photoshop Elements 10 will NOT work for me, which is why I own CS5 (but want to stop upgrading this too-expensive (for me) program, and want to get away from Adobe's upgrade policies for the full version of Photoshop.)

Now, as to Elements 11, is there any change? Will version 11 provide the full 16-bit capability I need?

Elements will open a 16 bit file. It will let you apply levels, sharpen, and other basic adjustments. It will not allow you to work with layers or to use most filters. You can't use the healing brushes.

Can PSE 11 Spot Healing Brush work with 16 bit images without converting them to 8 bit?This is not possible with PSE 10 which make the software less useful for persons working with scanned film material in full resolution.

On a Mac Elements 10 has a problem in Organizer. The time stamp for photos taken for all ohotos is one hour earlier than it should be. If you then edit a photo the time stamp gets reduced by a further hour!

To me, that makes Elements useless as an Organizer if you run it on a Mac. The problem has existed since at least the release date of Elements 10 and Adobe know about it.

I'm trying Elements 11 right now and right away I found something that doesn't work, Unsharp Mask It's so broken it is a joke. The preview button most of the time doesn't show the on screen image preview. The small window within the tool itself often doesn't show any changes and sometimes it will show changes but on half of the Window. Is this a joke?!

Good Lord, is any software provider today capable of putting out software where the most obvious and basic things work as they are supposed to?!

Update: I can only get the preview option to work if I close the tool and open it again. If I make another adjustment then preview doesn't work. The small window within the tool also breaks. Amazing that stuff like this makes it to market.

I think I will stay with Elements 10. It does fine for me so why change or upgrade, unless, of course, its absolutely necessary. I switched from 8 to 10 only because of the RAW editing feature for the Olympus E-P3, which was not available in version 8.

Perhaps I'm old school, but I don't understand why they incorporate an organizer. I'm sorry, but I like to take care of my own filing/organizing and not let a program take it over for me. That's just me I guess. Why, when loading the program, don't they provide the option for selecting or deselecting the organizer. Like I said, that's me.

It's not just you. I had my own organization schemes highly organized years before Adobe started shoving their own ideas down people's throats. I even wrote a program to automate it for me. Been using my own scheme for years, and can find albums 15 years old within a few seconds.

Like inohuri I would not spend the price for PS. I have CS2 only because I won it in a photo competition judged by Martin Evening for what I showed I could do with PSE2.

I too dislike the PSE organizer but have one use for it in PSE8 which came free with my Wacom Bamboo tablet. For RAW conversion and tone mapping I usually rely upon Oloneo PhotoEngine but I want to view NEF thumbnails from my Nikon D300 and D5000 and PSD bigger than I can with FastStone Viewer. CS2 Bridge will not open my NEFs, so I use the PSE8 organiser merely to view thumbnails as large as I choose but there is no point for me in the editor when I can have 16 bit in CS2.

Adobe line their pockets selling upgrades to gullible customers mostly by adding bells and whistles. Forget them and learn ALL you can with what you already have. I have run trial versions of later PS/PSE but did not like any of them. The GUI has become too busy, less space for the image you want to edit where CS2 is streamlined, neat and tidy.

In case anyone reading my comment above wants to try Oloneo PhotoEngine (PE) I should warn you of its pros and cons.

Its tonemapping is superb even from a single frame and it is lightning fast so adjustments are hugely easier than anything else. Tonemapping is very intuitive and often the results are amazing even from single RAW. Usually it recovers so much detail in highlights/shadows you did not even know you had. PC only, not MAC.

For HDR and bracketing you cannot rely upon PE unless you use a tripod. It will not align properly but there is a no-cost solution. Use the Photomatix Pro trial version and save HDR (32 bit) as it is very good on ghost removal automatically or manually - you choose which. Just be sure when you start a project you check to say you want to save an HDR before mapping and stop there. It looks awful when you get there before saving but only because the monitor image is not 32 bit or tonemapped. To open the hdr in PE just drag from Explorer into the PE editor.

"...redesigned UI featuring a brighter background and larger type for greater readability along with easier access to commonly used tools."

You know, as an investor and longtime user of Adobe, I'm worried.

To tout something like a brighter background is to admit defeat. It's 2012; any software company, especially one providing software widely used by imaging professionals, not only shouldn't waver between drastically different interface design, but also shouldn't make the interface static; allow the user to choose their own background color, their own icon layout, etc.

What's with the awful Organizer view? No info? Really?

Not to mention increasingly cumbersome pricing policies which are now edging out new users, amateur users, and those with either no need or without ongoing means to learn the system.

I think Adobe makes great software, and at this point they're lucky they have a relative monopoly on the "creative suite" market.

I was using PE9 quite happily until I bought a new camera, and found that I could no longer open its RAW image files. To do that I needed to upgrade to PE10 (with Camera RAW 6.7) or Lightroom 4 (with Camera RAW 7.1).

Being unhappy with the black on dark grey menus in PE10, I waited until today and bought the upgrade to PE11 (with the excellent Camera RAW 7.1).

Now I can open the RAW images from my Olympus OM-D, and see the menus properly! All I want now is a manual that explains the software!! (Barbara Brunage's Missing Manual for PE11 seems to be coming out in a few weeks.)

Really, the killer combination remains Lightroom 4 + Photoshop Elements. Use Lightroom as your organizer and [absolutely killer] RAW converter and you can then easily jump from LR to PSE with images that you want to do deeper editing with (layers, etc.). This gets you an amazingly solid workflow, stellar RAW processing, and a powerful advanced editor for a fraction of what the full Photoshop CS costs.

This gives you the best hierarchical photo organiser on the market and avoids Lightroom's flat file keyword only structure, which is a mess at best and a real blast from the past. And like you say you get the best editor in Lightroom.

Agreed! Another great combo is Aperture and Pixelmator. Granted, it's more for dedicated Mac users, but I find Pixelmator sits between PSE and PS when it comes to capabilities. Plus, it usually sells for $50.00 and seems to always be on sale for $25.00. Much different UI then PSE, but much faster once you learn it.

I've been using elements 8 for some time now for my 40D raw files. I've just bought a 5D MK III and so have also purchased lightroom 4. I need to get familiar with this now but also want to have elements for further editing (layers etc). Which version should I buy? for the 5D I have only the choice of 10 or 11. Which is best do you think? I'm not so sure about the look of the new layout of 11. Maybe it's better but a quite a change from what I'm used to on v8.

What Conchita is saying (if I dare speak forConchita) is to open in raw, make changes or not and then have the raw file open in elements editor and then you can save in any format available to Elements. At least that is how it worked in Elements 10 and all the ones before 10. Curt on Cape Cod

Thank you Conchita and curtmill22.What I should have done is after opening my CR2 file in Raw 7.1 is to click on the "Open Image" button on the bottom-right of this program to have the image open in the Editor.

Curves and 14/16 bit support. That's what I would need to be interested.

Can any one tell me what the batch processing is like and whether it supports adobe PS plugins?

I used to be a user of Serif Photoplus, which is very PS like, including nested layers. But it was unusably buggy with bugs stretching back over 10 years of versions on basic things, with a batch processing that does not allow changing adobe plugin settings from their defaults?!?!?!? Plus the curves implementation is primitive. I gave up. they evidently don't eat their own dog food (ie. use their own products).

I have used PS, but in my private capacity I prefer to avoid piracy and so use Irfanview with the smartcurves plugin.

http://free.pages.at/easyfilter/curves.html

It's very much a poor man's solution. Smartcurves is good, including white, grey and black point droppers, but it's all 8bit which has the potential for posterisation on the more extreme adjustments. I use Gimp for editing, which also 8bit. Sigh.

I'd consider this as an update to my Photoshop CS (yes I have the ORIGINAL Photoshop CS), but Elements doesn't support 16-bit TIFFs, and when I shoot RAW, I convert to 16-bitt TIFF, do all of my edits there, and then once I'm 100% done I convert to JPEG, no sooner.

I know Elements can't include all of the Photoshop features, it's just too bad because 16-bit TIFF support is the only thing, for me anyway, that it's missing.

Photoshop (full program) and PS Elements are graphics programs. Graphics programs are built from the ground up as compositors.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing

There is some overlap, but they are very different programs. Most photographers use some kind of DAM, and some kind of editor. Most users of LR or Aperture use a compositor/graphics package as an external editor.

Since you have Aperture, you must have a Mac. Since you have a Mac, you should -- imho -- use Aperture, upgrade to PSE 11 if you find the need for it, and set PSE as your external editor (set at Aperture preferences).

I understand, that is kind of the way I work. However, you are the first person I have heard that says a Mac user should use Aperture. Is there a reason for this? I thought Lightroom was universally considered superior. Can you tell me why you think a Mac user should use Aperture instead of Lightroom?

Aperture does seem to have less of an impact on my system and that is saying a lot considering what I have. Lightroom 4 can bring my quad-core i7 with 16GB of RAM to its knees.

So now, the question is, how to I ensure everything from Lightroom is now in Aperture if I go that route?

I don't agree that a Mac person should necessarily use Aperture. Lightroom has often supported Mac users first and better, via camera support, 64-bit support, etc. I use LR because it supported my Mac hardware back at a time when Aperture refused to.

There were some stats that said Lightroom is outselline Aperture even on the Mac's home turf platform alone.

As to the original question, whether Elements 11 replaces the other three depends on what you need to do. Elements 11 can't replace everything all the other software does, but it might be able to replace all the other software for the specific list of things you need to do.

"In all seriousness -- if Adobe Lightroom is bringing an Intel i7 with 16 gigs of ram "to its knees" -- then you've got some other rather serious problem going on with your system."

I agree with that, as a computer tech. Might be time to break out the restore/recovery disks to wipe your systems and start afresh. The first thing you should then do when connecting to the internet is "system updates" and the second is download and install anti-virus (Avast! has a free version and it's decent). After that make sure all programs that require updates do their update AND are confirgured to do so automatically. A common cause of infection is pdfs, even from friends/colleagues. Adobe reader needs updates. They close programming holes/mistakes through which virii wriggle (anti-virus is never 100% effective).

I have been a System Administrator for several years and have never seen anything like this. I have wiped this system and all software is set to update automatically. This behavior is not normal. I was talking to a friend last night - another System Administrator and Apple convert - and we associate this with Honda Accords: they are supposed to be reliable and you are almost hurt when they are not.

I have an iMac that is 6+ years old and a 2011 MacBook Pro. The older iMac doesn't have Aperture and Lightroom on it, but the MacBook does. I have never seen anything like this on my Macs or even <gasp> on one of my Windows machines.

Lots of great advice being given here. To be honest, as a newbie, you may not even notice the differences between Aperture and Lightroom until you've worked with either one extensively. The workflows are a little different, but Lightroom does have a bit nicer RAW support and PS compatibility. Aperture is a bit more simplified, in some ways, but ties in nicely to Apples ecosystem (Photostream, iPhoto, iMovie, FCPX etc.). They both produce great results, but regardless you'll eventually want an external editor for more advanced effects. My advice would be to pick a path (Aperture or Lightroom) and just go with it. Neither one is a bad choice. Currently I use Aperture because of my workflow.

Has PSE11 an antialiased (downsampled) graphics display now?PSE10 has not. When I zoom out of a noisy image, then artifacts are generated and the noise is not downsampled.This was a major problem for me, because the first thing I do with noisy images is to zoom out, to find the optimum image size.

Has anyone used PSE11 on a dual monitor system yet? I've used all iterations since the beginning of time and some versions worked and some didn't. My current 10 originally let me put the organizer on one screen and the editor on the other, but decided at some point it wouldn't do it anymore.